Instant lottery tickets (e.g., “scratch-off” lottery tickets) are sold at many types of retail locations including, stores, such as grocery stores, general merchandise stores, and the like. Various configurations of lottery ticket dispensers have been proposed in the industry for this purpose, including electronic dispensers that automatically dispense a ticket from a bin or compartment upon receipt of an electronic command signal.
Most conventional lottery ticket dispensers (manual or electronic) not only serve to dispense tickets, but also to advertise to potential purchasers the various tickets that are for sale from the dispenser. For example, conventional multi-bin dispensers typically include a sample ticket on display in each bin that is visible to purchasers facing the bin. In this way, the purchaser knows exactly which lottery tickets are in the respective bins. However, using the dispenser for this purpose in a retail establishment requires that the dispenser be at a location that is both visible to customers and accessible to the clerk for retrieving lottery tickets from the bin. This location is typically the counter at or near the store register, resulting in the dispenser taking up valuable counter space and hampering other transactions at the counter.
In addition, with conventional dispenser arrays, the ticket locations in the array are static. In other words, once tickets are loaded into an individual bin in the array, they will stay there until the tickets are exhausted or exchanged out for another game. Particularly for larger dispenser arrays having multiple bins, certain “prime” bin locations are inherently more visible and noticeable to purchasers, and tickets in these locations tend to sell better. For example, tickets in bins in the center of the array, or at eye height to customers, are more likely to sell as compared to tickets in bins that are located in the corners of the array, or below or above eye height to the customer. One means to remedy this situation would be to periodically change location of the tickets within the dispenser array. However, this is a time-consuming and impractical solution.
Accordingly, the lottery and retail industry would benefit from a multi-bin lottery ticket dispenser array that serves to advertise to potential purchasers the exact tickets in the array without concern to location of the array, while also serving to change ticket positions within the array at periodic times.